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"I'll be sitting in the same position by 2027," Sir Keir Starmer stated, joking that if the conversation proceeded smoothly, he might invite us into his official residence for a follow-up conversation next year.

There is never any break for prime ministers. In the hour before we sat down, Sir Keir had been speaking with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and working to decipher precisely had happened in Venezuela, where his big friend, US President Donald Trump, had just targeted and seized its leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Once our lengthy talk, which was considerably lengthier than normal, had ended, Maduro had been charged in New York.

Renewed Energy for the New Year

But as the year starts, Sir Keir seems to have had something of a revitalisation. Maybe even just a little relaxation with his family at Chequers, the prime minister's rural getaway.

This appeared to have left him in a more positive mood than at the sluggish tail end of 2025, a awful political year for him.

Yet, are he and his colleagues kidding themselves if they believe his standing are about to turn around?

Party Concerns

The grisly reality for the leader is that many of his party members are convinced he's underperforming at his job. Several of them would rather gamble and remove him in 2026.

But Sir Keir was rejecting the idea when we spoke on Saturday morning.

Multiple times he insisted he'd be "evaluated at the poll", arguing no one would strip his term from him – despite the fact that the optimal path of halting Nigel Farage and Reform UK reaching No 10 might be for Labour to replace its leader.

"We are in the fight of our lifetime and I aim to be at the forefront," he declared.

Upcoming Local Votes

The problem for the PM is that he will be judged long before then – in a huge set of elections in May across the UK. He tried to argue, perhaps too much, that they are concerning who runs councils, and who runs the devolved administrations in Holyrood or Cardiff – and unrelated to Westminster.

Accurate – in part. But although he may be reluctant to admit it, No 10 will be judged by those elections too.

Despite this, Sir Keir suggesting that there were no scenario under which he would walk away, should a his MPs contested his leadership for the job, should those elections be very poor for Labour.

An Optimistic Outlook

He sought to rationalise his unpopularity by saying the public was naturally impatient for things to improve. He sought to assure the interviewer, and the public, that the coming months would be distinct.

The economic situation would strengthen in the face of rising unemployment, he claimed, when strategies the government put in place during their first rocky year began to bear fruit.

• He committed to empty asylum hotels ahead of the current deadline of 2029, although he wouldn't set a new date on that.
• He said too, with the caveat that it wasn't a certainty, that a settlement in Ukraine felt a greater possibility now than at any time since Russia's comprehensive invasion.
• He disclosed for the first time that Western partners were now discussing how to integrate US and European forces to offer security for Ukraine – to guard a potential peace.

His big message is that this year the country will "see an improvement".

Familiar Arguments

The PM may have communicated with renewed vitality than observed from him for a while – calmer, perhaps, with more time to talk.

However, in spite of encountering demands from many directions for a more decisive strategy, with greater political vision, more dynamism, more speed and more immediacy, his points were well-known ones.

When he finds himself in considerable political trouble, is a different approach required a change of tack?

No government, and especially not one that has been unpopular for many months, gets everything its own way.

Sir Keir's challenges are not just because governing is hard, but because he and his colleagues have erred, including in the recent past.

Controversies and Dangers

The PM told me that he was sorry for saying he was "delighted" to see the return of the Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK after an controversy when statements he'd previously made – including calls for Zionists and police to be killed – came to light.

Sir Keir attributed it to "procedures" for not catching what the activist had said before – a more diplomatic way of saying not my fault.

And he is courting evident political risks as the year progresses. His friendship with the US president entails a new risk after Trump's military action on Venezuela.

Based on years of interviewing Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who was against the war in Iraq, over a long period, the thought he would be content with this kind of intervention seems implausible.

Policy Stances and Pressures

He asserted he was a "lifelong proponent of international law" but we "simply lack the entire story at the moment".

Critics wanted him to condemn it prior to we spoke. And the administration is likely to face increased demands to give an explicit view in Parliament in the near future.

There has also always been bubbling pressure in the Labour ranks to reverse or renegotiate some of the consequences of Brexit.

The PM rejects he's heading in that direction, but his new firmer commitment to move closer with the single market – the huge economic European market – will probably trigger protests that he is reneging on his promise never to try to undo the decisions that flowed from Brexit.

A decision to cosy up to more of the single market will delight many on his side of the party, but it is prime ammunition for Reform and the Conservatives to